Brewery Upkeep

Over the past couple months I have recommitted myself to brewing. Part of that is doing more of the little things between brew days to ensure that I am getting the most out of the beer that I am working so hard (...right...) to make. Some of the things I need to keep on top of are:

• Equipment Cleaning - having the mash tun, pots and other associated equipment clean before the next brew day
• Manage Fermenters - checking the temperature of the closet, keeping enough sanitizer in the air lock, etc.
• Keg/Keezer Maintenance - cleaning kegs, cleaning beer line, keeping inside of keezer ice and mold free

There are probably more things that I should be doing, but already I am seeing an improvement in not only my product, but the brew day as well. Tonight I spent time cleaning kegs to have them ready for the beers that are currently fermenting. I also cleaned 2 lines that were about to be hooked up to kegs. If I am going to be serious about making good beer, these are the kinds of things I need to keep in mind between brew days. I'm not on a break because I got the beer in the fermenter.

Hop Profile: Zythos

As I was peering through the door to the hop fridge at the homebrew store I as getting worried. I couldn't find Simcoe or Amarillo hops for the new version of my Guinea Pig IPA. Then I noticed a sign on the door that introduced a new hop 'variety,' Zythos. It was described to provide similar flavors and aromas to Amarillo and Simcoe so I grabbed a couple ounces to substitute into my recipe. I knew I needed to learn more about this hop, but I figured it was worth a shot.

Zythos is not a hop variety. It is a proprietary hop blend being offered by Hopunion. The following is from a Sept. 26, 2011 press release:

ZYTHOS™ ─ a proprietary hop blend created to embody the powerful tradition and aroma you expect for your finest ales and IPA brews. With targeted brewing values of 11.9% alpha and 5.0% beta, ZYTHOS is an IPA style blend created to optimize and exceed the aroma characteristics you require.

The high alpha-acid levels provide a big bitterness boost to the beer. This hop blend is also said to have low co-humulone levels. That means the hop blend should have a smoother finish. Hops with high co-humulone levels are associated with a certain harshness that can be left in a beer.

I don't know if this hop can replace the rather unique flavors that Amarillo and Simcoe provide, but I am certainly looking forward to the results.

Change Is Coming

And for once change is a good thing. I mentioned in a recent post that I was going to have some new gear coming into the fold. I will be building a new brew system. The system design comes from the wonderful work of Kal over at The Electric Brewery. I am following Kal's design almost exactly. My system will be designed to handle 50 amps instead of the 30 amps that Kal's initial design details.

You may have noticed my price per pint skyrocketing over the last couple weeks. That is because I started ordering parts for the system. The first parts arrived today. They are easily the second coolest part of the system. I present my new 20 gallon Blichmann Boilermakers! The decision to get the Blichmann kettles was difficult. I could get other kettles cheaper, but I decided to just build exactly what I wanted in the brew system.

I will be documenting my system build here on the blog. I am still waiting for some tooling and additional parts before I can really get started so updates on the system will be slow at first. While I wait I will just be staring at how shiny and cool my new kettles are.

24 Hours, 2 Brews

Following a pretty nasty snow/ice storm, I was finally able to get to my local homebrew shop to pick up some ingredients. Within 24 hours I had 2 beers in the fermenter. This was crucial because I am now down to 1 beer on tap, 2 beers carbonating, and nothing in the pipeline.

First up was the next reincarnation of my Guinea Pig IPA. Due to a computer crash and some mismanagement of paper copies I had no record of my previous recipe. So I had to recreate the recipe to the best of my ability then make the changes I thought could help the next version. Unfortunately the homebrew shop did not have the hops I wanted to use so I subbed the zythos (more on this hop in a future post) hop for both amarillo and simcoe. I pitched the yeast before I went to bed and got together what I would need for the brew in the morning.

The second beer I was making was my first attempt at Mike McDole's Janet's Brown Ale recipe. I had a couple friends over who wanted to see the brewing process. It's always nice to have someone else around to mill 14 pounds of grain. This was the first time I had trouble hitting my mash temps. First I was too low then made adjustments to be too high and finally got it close enough. I ended up being slightly low on my starting gravity for this beer but everything else went smoothly. The difference in gravity shouldn't make too much of an impact on the finished beer.

Both of these beers are now bubbling away in the basement closet. The IPA took a little longer than normal to get started. I will be very happy in a few weeks when these beers finish and I can put them on tap after what we have now is drained during our yearly Super Bowl party.

The Importance of Taking Measurements

The keg of Guinea Pig IPA poured its last pint tonight so I put Her Majesty's Sloppy Seconds ESB on tap. This was the beer made from the second runnings of the barleywine I brewed a couple months ago. It was an experiment to see how it would turn out. My first taste of the finished beer was a sweet beer, nothing like the ESB I was expecting. However, because I did not take good notes on this beer after getting it in the fermenter I don't know what the cause of the sweetness is. It could be that I didnt add enough hops or it didnt ferment to completion. The experiment now doesn't help because I was lazy.

Kegging Day

Ready to be cleaned!

Today was one of the less fun brewing days. I cleaned three kegs and filled two. On the bright side, this means that I have two more beers that will be ready to drink soon. I kegged the Vanilla Stout and the Pink Death Pale. The Vanilla Stout is a recipe that I have close to perfected. I am now dialing in the right amount of vanilla to add. The last iteration had a little too much due to some clumsiness and me spilling some extra vanilla extract into the keg. This time I added the intended amount and hopefully it will be what we are looking for.

The Pink Death Pale is an original recipe of mine. It is a pale ale made with a bit of rye. It is hopped with all Cascade hops. It needs some tweaking, but it definitely has potential. The name comes from the fact that I was doing a 2.5 gallon batch using my 10 gallon cooler mash tun. I was worried about temp loss with so much headspace and so I made an artificial top for the mash tun out of pink foam board insulation. I cut it to size, covered it in foil and set it on top of the mash. The name serves warning to anyone who drinks it that I may be killing them slowly with each pint (even though the foil kept the mash from touching the insulation).

New Toys

I've had a couple new brewery toys to play with for the last couple months. The first is a grain mill. I was having an issue getting a consistent grain crush from the various places I was shopping at to purchase my ingredients. After doing some research I decided to go with the Barley Crusher. It seemed to provide the most bang for my buck. With the addition of a 5 gallon bucket, the grain mill was ready to go. It offers the ability to crush the grain with a drill, but so far I have just been crushing it by hand. Turning the crank before brew day is a nice workout and gives me something to do while my strike water is heating.

The newest toy is a refractometer. I have only had this for one and a half batches so far and already I love it. Taking pre-fermentation gravity readings is now so fast and easy that I can't help but do them. It also helps me track my progress pre and post boil. I know whether or not I need to add some extract to help meet my target original gravity. I have also been taking readings post fermentation along with my hydrometer in order to test some of the refractometer correction equations that could allow me to take readings post fermentation.

Stay tuned for some big changes coming. I am about to have an onslaught of new toys!